Fears police disability shake-up to hurt Riverina

There is concern proposed changes to the New South Wales Police Death and Disability Scheme could result in Riverina officers being forced to move to Sydney to find work.

The State Government says officers on benefits should to return to work on restrictive duties to reduce the unsustainable rising cost of the scheme.

The police association's southern organiser, Malinda Bower, says while that proposal could work in metropolitan commands, in rural areas it would be impossible.

Ms Bower says there are not enough restrictive duties jobs to accommodate the number of officers that are injured at any one time.

"There would be less than six permanent restrictive duty officer positions available in Deniliquin and at a place like Wagga, you may have in the vicinity of 12," she said.

"But that, at no time, is going to be adequate for the amount of staff that have got injuries.

"So it's going to be a huge impost.

"What we're going to see is staff that can't return being forced into the bigger regional stations and quite often into the greater metropolitan area of Sydney, because we can't facilitate them."

Ms Bower says up to half the staff at the Deniliquin police station could be displaced if the proposed changes go ahead.

"It's a small station, I mean effectively, they've got numbers in the vicinity of 40," she said.

"We could lose half of them if they're injured and they can't come back to work because they won't be able to work at Deniliquin."

"So we're going to see a displacement of staff and we're going to have to backfill those positions and as a lot of people are aware, it's really hard to get officers out into those regional areas as it is."

Ms Bower says in some towns there are no restrictive duties positions.

"We've got attraction and retention problems in those smaller country towns as it is," she said.

"We're going to have an inadequate number of police to man those country towns.

"It's going to be hard on the communities as well, because the communities need those officers there to serve and protect them. They can't get that service if we can't get people because they've been moved to regional stations because we can't cater for them."

Changes to death and disability scheme have passed the NSW Upper House and are due to be debated again next week.